The blank world remained blank for a time that Lisa could not define. Then an orange dot appeared at Lisa’s feet and expanded into a path that lead a short way. Two branches lead off, and two rather white looking objects appeared. Then she could see a vast gap and a platform in the distance.
Lisa first walked upto the two white objects. Close up they looked like old computer consoles. On one of the consoles a button was flashing. Lisa looked into the distance to the platform across the void. She could see a white glow that resembled a genrep, and a lot of moving pulses towards the genrep. She was no longer with No.1 or Janos, and she certainly didn’t have a clue where she was.
Lisa looked at the flashing button on the console. Well the worse thing she could do now was press the button. She walked upto the console and pressed the button. A screen slid up from the back of the console. A digital face appeared, that Lisa could not identify.
“Ahh Lisa, you are back online. It’s Janos here.”
“Did something happen?”, enquired Lisa.
“Yes….you thought too hard. You nearly consumed all the resources available to the world. There was a slight flaw in the emulation software, which No.1 has now corrected. And there is bonus side effect of correcting the flaw. The software can cope with many more runners. No.1 now has plans to allow the whole world access to our world, well some parts of it. Anyway enough of that, we still need you to complete your task. What’s the last thing you remember?”
“I was saying that Brammer’s will need proof.”
“Nothing about RI.4?”, asked Janos. Lisa shook her head.
“Ok we was going to send an item from RI.4 but he’s still lost in a disconnected node, and time is against us. Twelve hours has passed since I last spoke to you.”
Twelve hours had passed since she saw the store, Lisa thought to herself. It only felt like twenty minutes.
I’m afraid bringing proof to Brammers will be difficult. Right now we moved your program to Gravis uplink. What you need to do is get to that genrep over there and get the message….WAIT!”
Before Janos could finishing saying “Wait”, Lisa had walked to the edge of the Abyss and put her hand out. She was stopped by an invisible force field.
“As I was about to say. The security barrier is enabled, and the hard wire link is not connected. Look up.”
Lisa looked up. High up she could see a platform that was red in colour. “That platform needs to be lowered. However it’s a hard wired system, which we cannot control. It can be lowered by flipping the switch on console 7 in the uplink underground. Once the platform is lowered, just use the GR and you are out of here.”
“I sense a but coming?”, said Lisa.
“Almost. The other console controls the email to Techhaven, so getting a message to someone there should be easy. Get them to take control of the op and get them to flip the switch.”
Lisa nodded. “Right I have to go Lisa and prepare for Plan C, good luck Lisa!”
“Wait!”, Lisa shouted, but it was too late. The image on the screen had gone. She had a few more questions.
Well there was not much else she could do. This place seem to be devoid of all activity, except for what was happening across the abyss. She walked over to the second console. There was only one button on this console, which she touched. Two more buttons appeared on the console, and once again a screen slid up from the back of the console, then two smaller screens expanded out from each side of the first big screen. The screen on the left lit up displaying a load of static, and the screen on the right came up with a prompt, that just said “RDY”. Then the middle screen came up with what looked like a load of options. She tried to make out what was on the screen.
- Code: Select all
HrEEDoM PHORC3 9R4V15 uPliNK U83r h4x0r 50F+wAr3
0p+i0ns
1. W4k3 b055 4ND +35+ NI9H+ $H1pHT R35P0N$E
2. WE8C4M L1NK$
3. LInK +0 9r@v15 uplINk-+eChh4V3N m4Il +R4N5F3r 4gENt
4. cl05E
Lisa frowned. Where was her Fire Apoc when she needed it? She gave the console a good kick. The characters in the middle screen and dropped to the bottom. Then the options reappeared in a more readable form.
- Code: Select all
Freedom Force Gravis Uplink uber hack software
Options
1. Wake boss and test night shift response
2. Webcam links
3. Link to gravis uplink-techhaven mail transfer agent
4. Close
She wondered what the other two options did. Webcam links seem to be pretty obvious. Now she started to wonder how to select the options, as there was only three buttons on the console. She pressed the left button and a “1” appeared in the right console window. She pressed the middle button, and “ERR” appeared in the window. She tried the right buttons, and a “0” appeared. She once again pressed the middle button, and “ERR” appeared.
“How do I get the options up?”, she thought to herself. She touched the screen and “2. Webcam Link” highlighted. The left screen sprung into life, showing four different camera views.
The first camera was from a high point outside the uplink overlooking the area. It was dark outside. The second camera was posted inside the uplink so one could see what was going on inside the uplink. The third camera seem to be in a control room. Lisa wasn’t sure if it was the inside of the uplink control room or not. Then the forth camera sprung into life and appeared to be tracking something moving. Lisa looked closely at the image before making out the camera was tracking a fast moving herd of Droms.
Lisa decided to try the first option. “Wake boss and test night shift response.” She tapped on the screen and the option highlighted. On the console screen a message appeared. “Dropping and restoring level 1 barrier – test mode”. Then she looked at the webcam console. She could see the uplink was ablaze with Gentanks, PSI monks, spies and private eyes running around at high speed, and looking puzzled. She then realised everything in the real world was running twice as fast, or she was thinking slowly.
Back to the real task in hand, get a message to Phoenix to get her out of here.
She selected “Link to gravis uplink-techhaven mail transfer agent” A new screen of options came up and the console sprung into life. “MTA Tech haven– 74910 messages frozen, 600 mailboxes offline, 215 mailboxes online.”
She then examined the other operations on the screen. There didn’t seem to be a “send message” option. There was a “Edit frozen message” option. Then she hit on an idea. Lisa found an option to “Freeze all messages” If she could edited a frozen message, then she could get a message out. Now to find a message from her boss Brammers. She browsed the frozen message queue, and saw a few for delivery to Brammers. She could see quite a few. The first one seemed to be from Tricia. Lisa thought it would be best to leave the boss’s love mail alone, and found an newsletter message from NExT. She opened the message, and started to read the message. Then she saw the status line in the message “Status: Frozen (Reason: Mailbox offline since 10:16)”
“Oh for Crahn’s sake.”, Lisa cursed to herself. She needed to find a mailbox that wasn’t offline. Finding a well known Angel who’s mailbox wasn’t offline would be difficult. Lisa examined the online mailboxes, and worked her way down the list. Then she spotted a name she knew.
It was Garyu69,’s mailbox and it was online. Lisa knew Brammers trusted him, so the chances of a hacked message reaching him and getting to the attention of Brammers were very high. She opened his mailbox, and saw a few messages there unread. The first message subject read “XXX I’m your hot pepper girl – get me the way you like it.”, and the second subject read “Cheap Black Dragon Viagra – the real hard stuff!”
Spam she thought. Garyu69 was not going to need those messages. She froze the message, and opened the frozen mail message. She cleared the subject and main message area. Then she managed to find her name in a selectable list of senders, and changed it so it was from her, and not from someone called “Daisy Lick”
Then she needed to think of a message to convince Garyu69 it was her. She knew Garyu69 like her red nail-polish, so she would mention that in her message. “Right.”. Lisa looked at the console, and then realised there was a slight problem.
There was no keyboard.
Lisa hit the button on the console in frustration, feeling upset and annoyed. “Why me?”
Then there was a faint beep that made Lisa look up. In the edited message there was a “0” in the message body. With a look of curiosity, she pressed the middle button and a space appeared. She tried the left button and “1” appeared.
She had an idea, to send the message in binary. She would need to devise a code, and hope someone like Morpheous could crack it. However thinking of a code was going to be hard. Then she had a brainwave.
Lisa had been reading some material from the Ceres disc, about a communications place called Land’s End Radio. Her curiosity on Land’s End Radio was sparked when she and Section 2 were checking around Simmons Factory, and they had found a yellow sign that read “British Telecom – Lands End Radio.” She read from the Ceres discs that Lands End Radio handled distress messages using a code called Morse code. The code was very easy to remember and learn that she had a little fun annoying the R&D department making beeping noises on her terminal while there was working. Now if she changed the dashes to “1” and dots to “0”, she had a working code.
She started to tap away on the console using the buttons, and composed a short message for Garyu69. After a few minutes, and checking the message was correct, she saved and closed the message. She unfroze Garyu69’s message queue, and monitored the message to see if he had read it. While she was waiting for Garyu69 to read his email she had a little fun re-sending the Viagra mail to some unknown person called Jake Hard.
Then she noticed that the message had been processed and read. Hopefully Garyu69 had got the message and was acting on it, however in the mean time she had to play the waiting game for help to come.